Presentation on 13 January 2015: AHRC Rethinking Existentialism in Psychotherapy workshop (http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/rethinkingexistentialism/?page_id=134) Watch the presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qh0KzYOklyY

1. Play in the
work of
Jean-Paul
Sartre
Rebecca Pitt (@BeckPitt)
The Open University (UK)
SartreinVenice(PublicDomain)https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-
Paul_Sartre_in_Venice.jpg
Rethinking Existentialism in Psychotherapy, London, UK
13 January 2016

2. WatershedPost:IntoNothingnessbyC.T.Ware(CC-BY2.0)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/watershedpost/13393113663
BEING AND
NOTHINGNESS

3. Caravaggio[Publicdomain],viaWikimediaCommons
“The very fact that Being and Nothingness is an
ontology before conversion takes for granted
that a conversion is necessary…”
(Sartre NE, 5-6)

4. ByHermesfrommars(Ownwork)[CCBY-SA3.0(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
sa/3.0)],viaWikimediaCommons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brouillard_en_noir_et_blanc.jpg
‘Renouncing the ivory tower, I should like the world to
appear to me in its full, threatening reality – but I do not,
therefore, want my life to stop being a game. That’s why
I subscribe whole-heartedly to Schiller’s phrase: “Man is
fully a man only when he plays.”’
(Sartre, War Diaries, 327)

5. AlanHeardman(CC-BY-SA2.0)http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2367105
PLAY IN BEING AND
NOTHINGNESS

6. Image:PublicDomainhttps://pixabay.com/en/fighting-boxers-boxing-fight-sport-159921/
“…play…the
least
possessive
attitude; it
strips the real
of its reality”
(BN, 580)
“The serious man is “of the
world” and has no resource in
himself.”
(BN, 580)

7. Beck Pitt (CC-BY 4.0)
“Play … releases subjectivity … As soon
as a man apprehends himself as free and
wishes to use his freedom, a freedom, by
the way which could just as well be his
anguish, then is activity is play.”
(BN, 580-581)

8. CC0https://www.pexels.com/photo/stairs-black-and-white-fire-escape-fire-ladder-4763/
“…The first principle of
play is man himself;
through it he escapes
his natural nature; he
himself sets and value
and rules for his acts
and consent to play
only according to the
rules which he himself
has established and
defined.”
(BN, 581)

9. ReflectionbyJourixa(CC-BY3.0)http://jourixia.deviantart.com/art/Reflection-332109223
PURIFYING
REFLECTION

10. SocceractionattheUniversityofWisconsin--Madison.PhotographbyMorryGash,ca.1975(CC-BY2.0)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal_celebration#/media/File:Soccer_game.jpg
“This particular type of project, which has freedom for its
foundation and its goal, deserves a special study. It is radically
different from all others in that it aims at a radically different
type of being.” (BN, 581)

11. Concluding remarks…

12. Bibliography
Anderson, T.C. (1993) Sartre’s Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity.
Chicago, IL: Open Court.
Bell, L.A. (1989) Sartre’s Ethics of Authenticity. London: The University of
Alabama Press.
Pitt, R. (2013) Who is the Revolutionary in Being and Nothingness? in Severally
Seeking Sartre (ed. O’Donohoe, B.) (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK)
Pitt, R. (2013) Play and Being in John-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness in The
Philosophy of Play (eds. Maclean, M; Russell, W; & Ryall, E.) (Routledge, UK)
Pitt, R. (2012) Jean-Paul Sartre and the Question of Emancipation. Ph.D. thesis.
University of Essex.
Sartre, J.-P. (1996). Being and Nothingness (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). UK:
Routledge.
Sartre, J.-P. (1999). War diaries: Notebooks from a phoney war 1939-40 (Q.
Hoare, Trans.). London, UK: Verso.
Zheng, Y. (2001) ‘On Pure Reflection in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness’. Sartre
Studies International, 7(1): 19–42.
Zheng, Y. (2002) ‘Sartre on Authenticity’. Sartre Studies International, 8(2): 127–
140. Zheng, Y. (2005) Ontology and Ethics in Sartre’s Early Philosophy. Oxford:
Lexington Books.